MILTON – Stephen Davis has an unusual wish for a man prior to the release of his 18th rock book – a biography of Fleetwood Mac singer and solo artist and songwriter Stevie Nicks.

“The main thing is I want to be in the next issue of AARP,” said Davis, who wrote “Gold Dust Woman” out of his Milton home. “She’s almost 70 and I’m 70, and they send out something like 25 million copies (actually the magazine claims more than 47 million readers).”

Davis said he is fascinated by Nicks, who found stardom relatively late (for a rock star) in her twenties and still fills an arena both solo and with Fleetwood Mac. She recently announced an 18-month tour starting in mid-2018 with Fleetwood Mac. Her 40 top-50 hits include “Don’t Stop,” the signature song of former president Bill Clinton’s campaign.

“The arc of the story is that initially she wasn’t really wanted in Fleetwood Mac and eventually she went out on her own and became a bigger star than Fleetwood Mac,” said Davis, who began researching “Gold Dust Woman” in 2012 and finished it in 2016. “When I started writing, I thought the book would be a valedictory thing about someone whose career is winding now. Now, I’m just trying to keep up with her and will need to update the book when the paperback comes out in a year.”

Best known for his best seller “Hammer of the Gods” about Led Zeppelin, Davis has written books about South Shore rockers Aerosmith, Carly Simon, Michael Jackson, Jim Morrison, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Guns N’ Roses, Levon Helm and Bob Marley. “Gold Dust Woman” will be published by St. Martin’s Press in New York City on Nov. 21.

“I found my niche early and I’ve been doing it for almost 40 years,” said Davis who graduated from Boston University and wrote about music for the New York Times before publishing his first book, on Bob Marley. “I’m privileged to plug into this enormous audience for this artistic movement called rock. It has longevity, and these heritage bands keep going on.”

While many books, including this one, are unauthorized biographies, others are authorized, which meant he spent hours talking and traveling with the stars, including Aerosmith. Hardly what you’d expect from a Milton family man – recently widowed and the father of children ages 29 and 38.

“Back in the old days, I would get visited by these rock stars in stretch limousines,” he said.

Davis met Nicks briefly years ago when he accompanied Fleetwood Mac on tour, but he never spoke with her for “Gold Dust Woman,” relying instead on extensive research of published and taped interviews, books by other authors, and Nicks’s own writing.

“What I loved as a biographer is all of her tribulations,” he said. “The pages keep turning because every few pages some train wreck happens. Almost everyone she was involved with hurt or betrayed her. The amazing thing to me is she forgave almost all of them.”

She also had her own demons – became addicted to and collapsed from the anti-anxiety prescription drug Klonopin, spent 47 days in rehab, had multiple broken love affairs, and struggled with her voice. Tours with Fleetwood Mac have been exhausting and stressful, especially because she and ex-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham pretended to fans they were friends, walking offstage holding hands after performances of “Landslide.”

As the story of her life unfolds, the reader is likely to question why she kept going.

“She was so ambitious that she was determined to let nothing stop her,” Davis said. “She was on a mission to get up on a stage and sing and make people feel good. She has been on a mission since her grandfather taught her to sing harmony and her mother kept drumming into her that she needed to be an independent woman.”

Nicks’s distinctive voice, poetic lyrics, and costume style are unmistakable. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, her hits include “Rhiaanon,” “Landslide,” and “Go Your Own Way.” At Tony’s Clam Shack in Quincy recently, Davis heard “Stop Dragging My Heart Around,” “Edge of Seventeen” (one of his favorites) and other songs from Nicks’s 1981 solo album “Bella Donna.”

Fans – who cover three generations – identify with Nick’s mystique as much as her music, Davis said.

“She represents something beyond what she is singing about,” he said. “There is something spiritual about her.”

Knowing such intimate details about rock stars, Davis said he is not surprised anymore by anything about their lives or the music industry.

But in recent years, Davis said he has allowed feelings of compassion into his books.

“About 10 years ago, I started to get old and think a little more about the passage of time and what people were going through, as opposed to just telling a neutral story,” he said.

In fact, in the final paragraph of “Gold Dust,” he makes clear his admiration: “Stevie Nicks, this self-described ‘old woman,’ had shouldered her burdens, met her responsibilities, and valorized her country in a way few other women have. No other rock star of her charmed generation could say as much.”

Jody Feinberg may be reached at jfeinberg@ledger.com or follow on Twitter @JodyF_Ledger.